The waiting game

Daniel Nelson

A small group of men watch resignedly, silently, as a Post Office van stops at the handful of homes on a bleak Hebridean island. An opera singer fills the soundtrack.

The postman drives off without calling at the men’s hostel. They are not surprised he has no letters for them.

They are in Limbo, stranded on the island, waiting for a Home Office letter rejecting or accepting their applications for sanctuary.

Another tableau. One of the men is in a phone box on top of a hill. The others are ranged around him, trying to take advantage of the highest point on the island to use their mobile phones. The man in the box punches the phone in frustration. We don’t know exactly why, but we sense and sympathise with his frustration.

Limbo is terse and moody, funny and tragic, truthful and surreal. The film offers brief snapshots in the life of a young Syrian refugee, Omar, an oud virtuoso who has left his parents in Turkey while his heroic brother fights in the war against Assad.

His main pastime, like that of the other men, is waiting. There’s an incident with a chicken. An odd couple give lessons on British culture. They help a farmer in a storm. Snatches of conversation suddenly light up distant ambitions. One of the Nigerians wants to play for Chelsea. An Afghan reveals his passion for Freddie Mercury.

Omar’s struggle to stay sane in this weird environment is made even harder by his struggle to live up to his parents’ expectations, his worry about their well-being, his relationship with his brother and even with his oud, which he clearly loves but can scarcely bare to touch.

Sensitive, quiet, repressed, this is the polar opposite of an action blockbuster. But writer and director Ben Sharrock’s film absorbs and entertains and turns the anonymous term ‘refugee’ into ‘fully rounded human being’. It’s a quirky delight.